THE QUINTESSENTIAL Emma Stone acting choice comes near the end of Battle of the Sexes, a solid but unremarkable 2017 tennis bio-drama in which she plays Billie Jean King to Steve Carell’s Bobby Riggs. King is all nerves before their famous match; as attendants carry her down a hallway on a garish throne, preparing for a grand entrance, she is visibly fretful over the reputational damage of agreeing to this in the first place. She ducks her head as she enters the stadium — and looks up as she emerges into the light, smiling like a superstar.
It’s a split-second reveal of the machinery behind preternatural charisma. Stone has always known how to let you in on a metamorphosis. Her best roles are those in which her character transforms and ascends: an unknown actress becomes a movie star, a newcomer to the queen’s court acquires power, a talented tennis player turns icon. She doesn’t disappear into her roles; she makes you aware of the games her characters are playing. In All About Eve terms, she’s Bette Davis and she’s Anne Baxter. With her giant eyes — which can project vulnerability or shift into unearthly confidence — and her raspy voice, Stone locates the star inside the striver and vice versa.
More recently, though, she has expanded into roles that distort these tropes. This winter, she stars in both the Showtime series The Curse, as a deluded house flipper who yearns for basic-cable celebrity, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Poor Things, as a woman implanted with the brain of an infant who goes on a journey of steampunk self-discovery. In both, the actress seems to be winking at the narratives that defined her earlier work — and it’s clear that she is hitting a new, more experimental high.
Denne historien er fra January 01 - 14, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra January 01 - 14, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
